OK math wizards. Since you know the water is 11 pounds and the flour is about 23 pounds, please convert to baker's percentages and convert that to a one pound of flour portion.Also if you use the webmasters portions for cracker crust for salt and sugar and oil, I think we have the recipe.

I am puzzled by the instructions you provided for the Round Table dough recipe. I have never had a RT pizza before and there are no RT restaurants near me in Texas, but when I look at the pizza menu (online) at a typical RT restaurant, it looks like the crusts for the pizzas are fairly thick and can support a lot of toppings. The RT website also refers to "rolling" the dough. What puzzles me is that when I look at the list of dough ingredients, it says to me that the crust is a thin crust and maybe on the thin-cracker side, much like the one Steve shows at the recipe page. This seems to be confirmed by the use of 11 pounds of water in relation to your estimate of 23 pounds of flour, which calculates to a hydration ratio of 43.4% (11/23 = 43.4%). The only times I can recall hydration levels that low is with thin, cracker-like crusts or thin versions of deep-dish crusts with a lot of oil/fat, far more than the RT ingredient list would suggest.

Can you clear this up for me? I would also like to know whether the dough is in fact rolled, as by using a dough sheeter, and if the dough is baked on a pan (e.g., a cutter pan) after draping the rolled out dough over the pan and trimming the excess. If that is, in fact, the case, then it will be difficult to come up with the baker's percents in any accurate way. However, knowing the predominance of the ingredients, the fact that the total dough weight is 35.25 pounds (24.25 + 11 = 35.25), and making some assumptions on the salt level (which is third on the list of ingredients by predominance, by weight), we might be able to get a workable set of baker's percents for someone to experiment with. I won't know for sure until I can get a handle of what the pizza is and how the dough is made. Right now, I feel like I am Sherlock Holmes and have just arrived at the scene of the crime and am looking for clues.

Round table is definately a cracker crust(thus my earlier attempt at DKM's recipe). It might be an "american version" of a cracker crust though. It is definately different from the super thin Margherita style cracker crusts of Europe. DKMs recipe, even though I blew it, had a very similar texture to a Round Table Pizza.

The dough is actually sheeted and place on those pizza "disks" to be held until ordered. The dough is then docked to cut down on the bubbles...luckily some bubbles still form..Some of the pizzas that are waiting just have sauce, but most already have the cheese mix on top. They use a mainly white cheese mix with some orange cheddar mixed in.

If I remember next week, I will take my camera and take pictures through the window into the prep area for you guys to look at and disect.

Let me go check out the website to see what the pies look like on there.

Peter, when you make it out here to No. Cal, give me a shout and we can go Pizza feasting!!! ;-)

So the crust is a very thin, several layer crackery crust that has been docked and then cooked in a conveyer oven on pizza "disks" The sauce is a very lite one with a NICE pepper bite. Not a gourmet pizza, but definately a guilty pleasure. I wish this thread would have started before lunch...I could have taken pix of my leftovers from yesterday.

Thanks for the new information. I was expecting a pizza like Domino's or Papa John's but the recipe didn't fit what their doughs are like. That is what confused me.

From elsegundo's description of the dough management process, it sounds like the dough is put into the cooler in bulk and then removed when ready to use, and divided and scaled. If that's the case, it would be helpful to know what the dough ball weights are for a particular size (diameter) of pizza. The RT website lists 6.5", 9.5", 12", 14" and 15" as the pizza sizes. I did a rough calculation of the thickness factor for the Steve/DKM dough, and it comes to 0.05 (based on a dough rolled out to about 24 inches), which is about half the thickness of a NY style dough/crust. If RT is using disks and sheeting to the size of the disks rather than using cutter pans with leftover dough, it would be nice to know how many dough balls for a particular pizza size (any one of the several pizza sizes) can be made from the 35.25 pounds of dough coming out of the mixer. It would be fairly straightforward to calculate the thickness factor from that type of information. And it may help determine a possible set of baker's percents.

If your local RT is having problems with bubbling, it's possible that they aren't fermenting the dough enough or the dough is too cold. You need at least 2 hours and more like 3 hours fermentation (in a commercial setting). If they are rushed, as they might be around lunchtime, and try to use dough that hasn't fermented enough or it is too cold, bubbling can occur. Hence, the need to do all the docking they do. Some places sheet the dough balls and put them on disks, either at room temperature or in the cooler. As you noted, the skins can be partially dressed in anticipation of orders.

Does RT deliver pizzas to customers? I can't tell from the ingredient list what kind of flour is used. "Enriched bleached wheat flour" is too broad to tell. It can be high-gluten flour, as in DKM's recipe, but I have seen all-purpose and bread flour used for cracker-type crusts. If RT delivers pizza, they may not be using high-gluten flour because the crusts can toughen and become too chewy before they gets to the homes of customers. That would suggest one of the other flours, or possibly a blend.

BTW, I did some Google searches on the ingredient list provided by elsegundo and found the following ingredients list for the RT pizza sauce: Tomato paste, water, spices, salt, garlic powder, dextrose, hydrolyzed corn protein. Not much to go on, but it's a start.

Thanks for the continuing support trying to dissect a pizza you have never even seen, let alone tasted.

Yes they do deliver. The dough stands up pretty well to this. I typically order pepperoni, and it gets pretty juicy, but the dough is not soggy.

It is not actually a "problem" with bubbles..they actually add to the flavor/texture of the pie. The docking is just part of the corporate culture, it is a very distinctive experience to watch them "put together" the pizzas, as opposed to a Toto's Neapolitan/NY pizza which is hand stretched/tossed, etc.

I used to travel to Texas pretty often for work and enjoy the greater Dallas/Ft. Worth Metropolis. Austin/San Antonio are other places I enjoyed. I used to stay over near the CompUSA headquarters at the Marriott Quorum. I don't think I ever had Pizza in TX. Hooters, BBQ and Mexican were usually the draw.

I'd like to suggest that we work with baker's percents and weights. You will see why in a few moments. Plus, we can always convert back to volumes later on once we zero in on what might be the "final" formulation.

Looking at your formulation that you posted earlier today, and assuming a 48% hydration ratio, this is what I get from a baker's percent and weight basis:

Looking at the formulation as I have converted the ingredients to weights, I don't believe that your formulation is quite correct. I say this because the FDA laws and regulations regarding labeling require that ingredients on labels be listed in the order of predominance, by weight. Putting the water and flour aside for the moment, that means that in the ingredient list you provided, there is more salt by weight than Crisco, more Crisco by weight than sugar, more sugar by weight than non-fat dry milk, and more non-fat dry milk than yeast. (For ease of comparison see: Ingredients: enriched bleached wheat flour (bleached wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, ferrous sulfate, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), salt, partially hydrogenated soybean and cottonseed oil, sugar, non-fat dry milk, yeast.)

Unless RT has legally been able to get around FDA labeling requirements, yeast should be the lightest ingredient (by weight) on the list. Looking at the other ingredients, I see that salt is at 2.4%. That is high by most standards, but it may be OK for a cracker-type dough because it will retard fermentation and prevent the dough from rising too much, which may be good for that style of dough. If you'd like, as you tweak the formulation, you can boost the amounts of the other ingredients, by weight, especially the non-fat dry milk (which is very low), yet keep yeast at the bottom of the list. I'm no expert on cracker-type crusts, but I do know that sugar at around 1% and non-fat dry milk at around 3-4% are typical numbers.

If it will help for comparison purposes, and since Zack has said that DKM's recipe is close to RT's, here is the DKM formulation as I converted it to baker's percents and weights:

As you can see, there is a lot of latitude between the third through sixth ingredients. That is why it is so hard, without further information, to determine accurate baker's percents. And that is why I was asking questions about correlating total dough batch weight (35.25 pounds) to numbers of dough balls and corresponding pizza sizes, and the methodology for converting dough pieces to specific disk sizes. If I had to guess, and from what you have said, it sounds like RT puts a piece of dough with a weight corresponding to a particular pizza size through the sheeter three times and then cuts a skin, "cookie cutter" style, to fit the corrensponding sized disk. I assume they try to keep waste down to a minimum and try to closely correlate dough weight with pizza/disk size. (Query: Do they use different disk sizes for different size pizzas?)

I might also mention that you cannot assume that the RT mix uses instant dry yeast (IDY). There may be a temptation to think that IDY is being used, since IDY is commonly added dry to other dry ingredients, but many bakers and pizza operators use active dry yeast (ADY) in the same manner. If you know for a fact that the yeast in the RT mix is IDY, then you can proceed based on that understanding. Otherwise, you may have to play around some more with your formulation. At the end of the day, the type of yeast may not really matter all that much (and the same may apply to other ingredients), but if the objective is to get close to what RT does, then those matters can't be entirely ignored.

Great work on the info I provided earlier. Yes I assume the ingredients are listed by weight. Just an aside, Round Table never expected the public to see the premix bag. But assuming the ingredients are listed by weight, my assumption on salt might be high. I usually use as little salt as possible-personal taste.

The flour I believe is the same as sold by Pendleton as "pizza flour" 12 protein.That is a high gluten mix. The flour ingredients (just flour) listed on the 42 pound bag I bought today are exactly the same.

So that leaves me logically at

16 oz high gluten flour 7.5 oz water 1 tsp salt 1 tsp Crisco, 1 sugar 1 non-fat dry milk 1 tsp yeast. I'm still not sureAs for the dough process I do not think theyweighed out dough balls. They used a type of sheeter that let the dough rollers do the work. The three passes produced a progressively thinner ribbon of dough. Then they would use different sizes of cutters.

I was wondering where the 48% hydration ratio you mentioned earlier came from.

Also, is the Pendleton "pizza" flour you purchased called Mondako, from Smart and Final or Kash 'n Karry? I have a Pendleton information booklet on their flours but I don't see a 42-lb. bag. There is a 32-lb. bag size however.

I meant to mention in my earlier post that if you are going to use non-fat dry milk you may want to reconstitute it in some of the water, heat it to just below boiling, and let it cool before using. I'm talking here about the supermarket non-fat dry milk. If you have a high-heat baker's grade non-fat dry milk, there is no need to do this. It can be used as is.

Out of curiosity, I decided to use a spreadsheet today to try to come up with an ingredient list for a "test" dough that one familiar with the Round Table dough/crust might attempt to see if it results in a crust anything like the RT product. As I got into the process, I could see that there are any number of possible combinations of amounts of salt, Crisco, sugar, non-fat dry milk and yeast that could be used yet conform to the order of predominance of the ingredient list you provided. So, I had to make certain assumptions.

First, I assumed a hydration baker's percent of 48%. That is the one you provided earlier although I don't know if that is, in fact, the actual one used at RT. Second, I assumed a 17-inch dough round (skin). That size would allow one using the test dough to make a 17-inch skin from which a 16-inch skin could be cut for use on a 16-inch screen or disk (with one-inch left over). Alternatively, one might use the 17-inch skin on a 16-inch cutter pan, and use the one-inch excess to form a rim for the dough in the cutter pan. Third, I assumed a thickness factor of 0.05. That is about half the thickness of a NY thin style, and is also the number I calculated from DKM's cracker-style dough recipe that Steve used for the pizza described on the recipe page. Fourth, I made estimates, all by weight and in descending order of predominance, for the salt (1.75%). Crisco (1.5%), sugar (1%), non-fat dry milk (1%), and yeast (0.5%). It is among these latter ingredients that there can be substantial variation and multiple possible combinations yet stay within the rank order of your original RT dough ingredients list.

Using the above assumptions, I then calculated how many pieces of dough would be needed to produce a dough batch weighing 35.25 lbs. (24.25 pounds mix plus 11 pounds water). That number turned out to be almost 50. I then determined the quantities of ingredients that would be needed for one dough ball--the "test" dough mentioned above. This exercise resulted in the following formulation:

It is possible, of course, to change any of the baker's percents (other than for the flour) and keep everything in the proper pecking order. If there is another combination of baker's percents that you think you would prefer to experiment with, let me know and I should be able to give you the quantities (in both weights and volumes) for that particular combination.

Ok, could not wait until my planned Wednesday visit to Round Table for pictures...ok, for the food.

I decided to get RTP, but went to another location. Pictures were not as easy, so these are just the start. I hope to get more/better pictures on Wednesday.

Here is the "prep station"In this picture you can see a guy docking the dough. He makes several passes on each skin. Next to the skin he is working on you can see a pile of skins seperated by wax paper(or something like that)(http://www.zackuribe.com/docking.jpg)

Here is a close up of the pizza. You can see that they do extensive docking, but still get some large bubbles on the pie..YUMMMM!!!!(http://www.zackuribe.com/RTPizza.jpg)

On Wednesday, I hope to get pictures of the pizzas waiting on the disks, and some pictures of the 'Pie Cutters" that they use for the pizzas. Maybe a shot of their cheese mix.

Round Table water: if 11 lbs the mix calls for goes into 24.25 ponds of mix (almost a quart of 100 pounds), multiply 11 x 4 =44. However we really have about 23 pounds of flour in the 24.25. Baker's percentages are really a ratio of an item compared to flour. So 11 divide by 23 = 47 plus. No matter you are just under half or 7 ounces water for one pound of flour.

The rest? salt I'm guessing maybe a teaspoon and a half per pound could be off. Crisco, we are talking about the solid type. I assume that from its ingredients and the fact that the mix is not refrigerated.

Pendleton flour I mean 42 (19.05 kg). Not Mondako butsimilar to their Bakers Craft and Morbread bleach. Same protein, all according to the brochure I picked up at the office in the Pendleton plant. Sugar, Non-fat dry milk, and yeast I don't know but these are the only ingredients. We can speculate there is at least as much if not more sugar and milk as yeast. End of recipe.Yeast I believe it is IDY from the fact that it is added at 80 degrees and not 105 which is what Straw Hat (sorry another CA chain) uses. BTW they use whey powder rather than non-fat milk so just substitute ADY and whey and you have the Straw Hat recipe.

The 48% number looks to be about right, and if I extrapolate the amount of water in my formulation out by almost 50 times, the amount of water would be 11 pounds. Doing the same with the flour and it would be just under 23 pounds (with the rest of the ingredients coming to around 1.3 pounds).

I intentionally selected the salt to be on the high side (but not out of range for pizza dough) so that there would be enough room for the other ingredients between it and the yeast, which is at the bottom. I suspect the sugar and non-fat dry milk are in the recipe primarily to provide browning of the crust. Adding their percentages together (2%) would seem workable and in range. I also wanted to keep the Crisco on the high side, on the assumption that you would want enough of it to make a pliable dough. Of course, my assumption could be wrong.

Whether IDY or ADY is used doesn't matter much so long as the correct amount is used. If IDY is used, then there is a little bit more room to increase the other ingredients. But it will be slight. I assumed that the water temperature (80 degrees F) was chosen to ensure that the finished dough temperature would come out around 80 degrees F, independent of the type of yeast used. Mixing 35.25 pounds of mix/water for a bit over 6 minutes at speed 1 of a typical commercial mixer suggests a fairly low machine friction factor--maybe around 5-10 degrees F. Under these circumstances, using 80-degree water will achieve a finished dough temperature of 80 degrees so long as the room temperature and flour temperature are around 75-78 degrees. That would seem about right for California most of the year and means not having to teach workers how to calculate water temperatures to achieve the desired finished dough temperature.

I revisited my Pendleton information sheet and see that I misread the amount of flour. I was looking at a Pendleton recipe for using their Mondako pizza flour to make pizza dough.